I was thinking of throwing a tennis tournament for a festival in my town that we have every year...already the town has softball/volleyball tournaments the same weekend. I'm not worried about getting the people to enter its just the insurance and everything. I'm hoping this shouldnt cost more than 400 dollars to run and insure this tournament. Anybody have experience with running a tournament? thanks

Actually yeah, I ran two tournaments last year and am running at least 5 this summer. If you are good at multitasking and familiar with how running tennis tournaments works, it's actually a fun challenge to run one and not too difficult. If you get someone to help you out with the tournament desk you can play for free too while hopefully making a little bit of a profit.

I would strongly recommend you make a list of all your projected costs, and divide them up based on flat costs and per person costs. Insurance and court rental are your flat costs. Balls and prizes are your per person costs. Slightly overestimate your costs to be safe. Then figure out your break even point:

1. Take the per person entry fee.
2. Subtract from this the per person costs. This gives net profit per person.
3. Now using that number figure how many entries you need to match the flat costs.

Now anything after that point will be profit! I like to shoot for somewhere between 30-50 in my section for a break even point. If I get a lot of players to enter I can give more features like a player party, prize drawing, etc.

Big Tip: Look for sponsors, whether it be money or prizes this will be a huge help and well worth it.

Honestly the insurance is the biggest headache of all. I can refer you to the company I am using which is the best policy I have found so far. They charge you based on a head count of participants. You pay an estimate. If you have fewer players than estimated you get some money back (which saves you money), and if you have more than estimated you have to pay them some more money (but it means you made more yourself). It a win-win! Our policy is about $650 for a 4-month period based on 150 (or maybe 200) unique participants.

Actually yeah, I ran two tournaments last year and am running at least 5 this summer. If you are good at multitasking and familiar with how running tennis tournaments works, it's actually a fun challenge to run one and not too difficult. If you get someone to help you out with the tournament desk you can play for free too while hopefully making a little bit of a profit.

I would strongly recommend you make a list of all your projected costs, and divide them up based on flat costs and per person costs. Insurance and court rental are your flat costs. Balls and prizes are your per person costs. Slightly overestimate your costs to be safe. Then figure out your break even point:

1. Take the per person entry fee.
2. Subtract from this the per person costs. This gives net profit per person.
3. Now using that number figure how many entries you need to match the flat costs.

Now anything after that point will be profit! I like to shoot for somewhere between 30-50 in my section for a break even point. If I get a lot of players to enter I can give more features like a player party, prize drawing, etc.

Big Tip: Look for sponsors, whether it be money or prizes this will be a huge help and well worth it.

Honestly the insurance is the biggest headache of all. I can refer you to the company I am using which is the best policy I have found so far. They charge you based on a head count of participants. You pay an estimate. If you have fewer players than estimated you get some money back (which saves you money), and if you have more than estimated you have to pay them some more money (but it means you made more yourself). It a win-win! Our policy is about $650 for a 4-month period based on 150 (or maybe 200) unique participants.

thank you for the input... I just talked to the main guy for the city today and he told me they would NOT charge me to run and insure this tournament. that is a BIG weight lifted off my shoulders... now I just need to promote and get people signed up

thank you for the input... I just talked to the main guy for the city today and he told me they would NOT charge me to run and insure this tournament. that is a BIG weight lifted off my shoulders... now I just need to promote and get people signed up

I've been thinking of requiring everyone at some point to supply one can of balls. That will cut down on a big cost. Let the winner take the unopen can. It's only about 2 bucks more and it saves the tournament a truck load of money. Can you see any draw back to this?

Actually yeah, I ran two tournaments last year and am running at least 5 this summer. If you are good at multitasking and familiar with how running tennis tournaments works, it's actually a fun challenge to run one and not too difficult. If you get someone to help you out with the tournament desk you can play for free too while hopefully making a little bit of a profit.

I would strongly recommend you make a list of all your projected costs, and divide them up based on flat costs and per person costs. Insurance and court rental are your flat costs. Balls and prizes are your per person costs. Slightly overestimate your costs to be safe. Then figure out your break even point:

1. Take the per person entry fee.
2. Subtract from this the per person costs. This gives net profit per person.
3. Now using that number figure how many entries you need to match the flat costs.

Now anything after that point will be profit! I like to shoot for somewhere between 30-50 in my section for a break even point. If I get a lot of players to enter I can give more features like a player party, prize drawing, etc.

Big Tip: Look for sponsors, whether it be money or prizes this will be a huge help and well worth it.

Honestly the insurance is the biggest headache of all. I can refer you to the company I am using which is the best policy I have found so far. They charge you based on a head count of participants. You pay an estimate. If you have fewer players than estimated you get some money back (which saves you money), and if you have more than estimated you have to pay them some more money (but it means you made more yourself). It a win-win! Our policy is about $650 for a 4-month period based on 150 (or maybe 200) unique participants.

thanks for teh insight

__________________
Member of TW MAC. yes, we are better than you. and we bout to hop on a court to make another 'mil

I was thinking of throwing a tennis tournament for a festival in my town that we have every year...already the town has softball/volleyball tournaments the same weekend. I'm not worried about getting the people to enter its just the insurance and everything. I'm hoping this shouldnt cost more than 400 dollars to run and insure this tournament. Anybody have experience with running a tournament? thanks

Yeap...make sure you schedule them 3 hours apart if you don't want matches running into each other and people getting ****ed off and waiting. I'm trying to convince my folks into doing the same thing. We have a 3 day tourney that is going to have about 160 people in it. I say play singles first and then either mixed followed by doubles...but all 3 hours apart if you can.

whats this mean? now im just debating whether if i should just do opens for singles/dubs open and have a open for the singles/dubs for 40 and over?

Singles sticks are used to raise the nets to regulation hight for singles on a court striped for doubles. If your facility doesn't have them maybe you could borrow them. They are made of wood or metal.

i've seen those before...I need some of those because some of the nets sag because soccer players sit on the nets all the time. I have a meeting with the guy from the city in 2 weeks in front of the committee/

Most local non-USTA tournaments around here have you provide your own tennis balls & then the winner (if he didn't open) gets a can from the loser. It's definately a way to keep costs down. I've never had a problem as a player in these tournaments with people bringing 'junky' balls.

If this is going to be a "fun" tournament for beginners and anybody under the sun, don't worry about all the details too much. You may be getting people in cut-offs and Converse All-Stars. Tournament players would probably pass on it wanting to save their energy for ranking points. But you never know, they might show up for some hit and giggle or local bragging rights. Good luck with it and keep us informed how it goes.

You should decide how high of quality you want you tournament to be. As others have said, for affordable non-USTA tournaments make the event nice and laid back and have people bring their own can of balls. You don't really have to worry about singles sticks either.

For USTA tournaments, if you are charging enough then you should be providing most everything. High quality balls (championship quality, good endurance), water, singles sticks if you can, other nice things like Gatorade, fruit, etc. Basically, the more you charge the more you should be providing so people want to do it again next year.

Either way, you should definitely use TDM to help with your scheduling. You can input all the players manually and have it create draws and schedule automatically for you. If your event is on TennisLink it will download all the players for you (except for those who register by mail). Although to do that you have to get "Tournament Director" status from your section.

TDM has an option for scheduling called the Garman system which helps avoid having as many open courts (but leads to a little more waiting sometimes), it also allows you to choose what you think the average match time for each event will be. Since I usually have open courts when I run my events I just let the average be 2 hours and go with block scheduling and people like it because they never have to wait for a court to open. But if you have big draws and not many courts you will need to squeeze them in as best you can.

Back to the insurance, that's great the facility isn't requiring that from you. Oftentimes the facility will hold you liable for some certain amount for damage to the property even though they don't require proof of insurance, so you should check that out. I would suggest you at least look into a few insurance quotes even if you decide not to get any. While the facility may not hold you responsible for damages, a player who gets hurt during the tournament could try to get some money from you. It's very rare, but still...you can always limit your risk by making a waiver and having all the players sign it before their first match.

Once you get past all the headaches of organization I'd be happy to help you work out the scheduling.